Single gravestone left standing in middle of Chinese building site

The epitaph ‘rest in peace’ cuts no ice with the Chinese developers who bought this cemetery.

Look closely and, among the thousands of tons of concrete and reinforcing mesh, you’ll see a lonely headstone on this 10m (33ft) high mound in Taiyuan, Shanxi province.

Villagers were paid to move the remains of their ancestors, however one set of relatives were clearly dead against that idea.

The developer is now offering them 1,000,000 yuan (£100,000) to move the last grave, but the family is holding out for more.

In the meantime builders have carried on regardless, with the apartment block expected to be completed by April 2013.

The news comes a week after a duck farmer in Zhejiang province finally agreed to have his house bulldozed, after initially rejecting an offer of compensation when local authorities wanted to build a motorway to link to a new railway station.

Instead of scuppering the plans, local authorities instead opted to build a motorway around his house.